Vernon Family Continues Giving

Many families invest in a school to make it a better educational institution for their children and community, and the Vernon family is a prime example.

Chester (C.B.) and Lula Vernon moved to Marion in 1926. C.B. had been appointed

superintendent – a position he held for more than 30 years. In 1933-34, C.B. took a year’s sabbatical to earn his Ph.D.from the Univ. of Southern California. He was the first educator with a Ph.D. in the entire secondary school system for the State of Iowa. His family went with him for the year in California. Oldest son James was disappointed to miss his senior year at MHS. He became an engineer and returned to USC as a professor. Robert (’41) became a physician in Dubuque, and John (’47) stayed in Marion and practiced law. All three were graduates of the Univ. of Iowa. In 1964, a new high school was built for the Marion district and it was decided to name the former building C.B.Vernon Junior High. That original building has been replaced, but the name remains Vernon Middle School in honor of this family’s leadership. C.B.’s middle son, Robert and two of his five children were lost in a tragic plane crash in 1978. Upon the passing last year of Robert’s wife, Amelia “Mimi”, the Foundation received a generous gift to establish the Chester B. and Lula E. Vernon Memorial Fund. Grants from the fund will be distributed to support MISD projects and programs.

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Noteworthy Alum

Alisabeth Von Presley, 2005Alisabeth has been able to take a lifelong passion of singing and creating music and move it past a hobby and turn it into a career. During high school and college, Von Presley performed in many theater productions and expanded her singing talent to the point of auditioning on American Idol in 2014. Von Presley has taken her passion and talent and expanded her singing career by joining a rock band called Four Star Fate, releasing multiple music videos, creating three different albums of original music, and touring the country multiple times racking up almost 10,000 miles—and still plans to go again. “The road – a guitar – and a room full of strangers waiting for you to impress them. The challenge and the reward are more incredible than I could have ever imagined. It’s where I belong,” says Von Presley about her current plans.

Kasey Semler, 2011Kasey was named first-team all-state after his senior year, leading Marion to two WAMAC championships and leaving Marion as the program’s all-time leader with 137 three-pointers. He then played for Kirkwood but in the final regular-season game of his sophomore season he tore his left ACL. He took a walk-on offer to play at UNI once he was healthy. A week after he was cleared for drills, he tore the ligament again during workouts. Ultimately, before a third ACL tear during a recreational game in 2016, he retired from competitive basketball without ever suiting up for the Panthers. After getting his graduate degree from UNI, he made the trip overseas and is currently in his first year as a counselor at an international school in Thailand. Kasey has one more year on his contract and he doesn’t know what the future will hold after that but he says he’s open to whatever may come his way.

Shane McCallister, 2005
Shane has taken his passion for art, combined it with an autumn leaf, and created an entire line of masterpiece artworks. He takes various leaves and flower petals that he finds and digitally scans each one. “Starting to make illustrations I wanted to never alter the leaves and petals other than to resize each. The thought is to treat each scan like a brush stroke in a painting,” says Shane. While in high school, he enrolled in an Adobe Photoshop course. He learned rapidly thanks to teacher, Jenifer Thilges, who was a “major influence in my pursuit of art.” After high school, he attended Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Since moving back to Marion, he has become a proud husband and father in addition to spending countless hours on his artistic passion and working a full-time job.

Stephanie Law, 2002Stephanie, Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware, was selected as the North America Molecular Beam Epitaxy (NAMBE) Young Investigator Award. She was recognized for “contributions to the MBE growth of materials and devices that harness emerging physical phenomena, including topological insulators and plasmonics.” The work in her lab focuses on controlling the way light behaves in materials for application in such devices as enhanced infrared detectors and superlenses. She is the first female to win the award since its establishment in 2006. Stephanie joined UD as the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in September 2014. The NAMBE Young Investigator Award recognizes individuals who have made “significant contributions to the science and technology of MBE or enabled by MBE by the age of 35 and show promise of future leadership in the field.”

Christopher Gustas, 2007
Christopher had fun playing all types of sports growing up, but mainly focused on football and baseball. After picking up a tennis racket for the first time in the spring of his freshman year of high school, his hard work and dedication allowed him to move through multiple tennis programs and eventually became Head Coach for the men’s and women’s tennis program at Wartburg College. He says he adopted a life plan a long time ago that has helped him reach this position. “I loved being on a team, working and getting better, challenging myself, and being competitive. All of those things held true throughout high school and still do today.”

Dan Kellams, 1954Dan released his second book about Marion, “Mistaken for a King: Sketches of a Small-Town Boyhood,” which the Iowa History Journal describes as “a masterwork of a memoir.” The book is a series of finely honed and often funny recollections of an Iowa childhood in the 1940s. The Journal’s reviewer, Julie Goodrich, writes that the book’s essays “are beautiful, wise and full of heart. These vignettes are often startlingly vivid and frequently seem almost unfinished…so much like the nature of memory itself. Children in those days had a freedom that many would find shocking today.” The Foundation has books available for purchase for $14 with proceeds benefiting the Foundation.